Soul Sacrifice: The Knife-bearers and the Clans, #2

By Karen See

Raven’s Eye, Illinois.  A nice town.  Beautiful.  Idyllic even.

Infested with demons.

Two Knife-bearers desperately attempt to stop the evil before the second portal can be opened.

Not far from there, Renee discovers that a demon is infiltrating Grant clan.  Together with Tyler Jansen, she rushes to save the clan before it’s engulfed and destroyed.

The second evolution has begun.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Karen See
• Release date: Sep 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386089230

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

June 1, 2015

Raven’s Eye, Illinois

Jeremy Stone ignored the incessant ringing of his cell phone. He knew who was calling and that it wasn’t time yet to listen to the messages Daniel Bergen had been leaving. It wasn’t time for Jeremy to be a part of Daniel’s crisis.

His instincts as a knife-bearer told him that. They told him to focus on the crisis at hand and not whatever Daniel was facing.

And there was a crisis.

He raised his gaze, contemplating the town ahead. Beside him, his wife Beth crossed her arms and leaned against the hood of the car. A quick glance told him that she was just as scared and alarmed as he was. Being a knife-bearer didn’t exempt one from being frightened of the evil in the world, it merely made fright a more constant state. When one could see every invisible evil in the world that normal people couldn’t see, it had the effect of making one rather anxious and more than a little cynical at the sheer levels of evil present. It made one aware of just how vulnerable the world was and how few good people were fighting the fight against evil.

Looking at the swarm of evil now, Jeremy fought the urge to flee.

There are too many of them, a tiny doubting voice in the back of his mind whispered.

Jeremy told that voice to shut up.

He knew better than to try to flee this battle. If they did leave, they’d just somehow end up right back in the thick of it. He’d tried running before and run right to exactly what he’d been trying to escape. Like Jonah being swallowed by that big fish, he’d been forced to face his calling in the incident that had given Beth her own calling. Running wouldn’t stop what was coming, it’d only delay their part in it. Running away never accomplished anything.

I don’t like this, he muttered, feeling uncertain for the first time in many long years.

You think I do? How are we going to monitor this? The longer we stay, the more demons will show up and this place is already infested to the rafters. They’re crammed in there. Beth let out a slow long breath. This isn’t natural, she commented and Jeremy wholeheartedly agreed. It wasn’t natural.

There was nothing natural about what there were seeing.

Evil was cloaking the bucolic town of Raven’s Eye, like tendrils of grayish green sickly fog slowly taking over. Demons of all classes moved through the streets, their red pinprick eyes occasionally turning to the pretty town sign where Jeremy and Beth watched.

We’ll kill the ones we see, the ones who get close. It was something like a plan and more of one than they ever worked from.

The ones we see, she asked in an incredulous tone. Jeremy, we see them with every blink, every turn of the head. They’re everywhere. There’s not one place in that town where they haven’t nested. If we do anything at all, they could swarm us. Hit us one after another until we go down. There are only two of us and hundreds of them. Thousands if we count the low levels.

It was a bad sign that there were so many gathered in one place. It meant things Jeremy hated contemplating. They could swarm us even if we do nothing. Rock, meet hard place and have some lovely babies together.

The demons knew they were there. Evil always did, for they were marked. They were warriors, whether they liked it or not. Demons sensed them. They were like a beacon for them and usually, the demons came running to play with them.

But not here.

Here, the demons waited for the knife-bearers to come to them.

Not good.

An icy breeze came from the road ahead, pushing from the town, and Jeremy gagged from the smell of rotting carrion. Evil had more than a foothold here. The odds were definitely against them. He shivered.

His phone rang again.

Will you just answer him already, Beth asked, glancing at him. He’s going to keep calling. You know that. You can’t ignore him forever.

He’d ignored him for over a week. He’d known he had to let the calls go to voice mail and let Daniel deal with his crisis all by himself. It was a learning experience for Daniel, a moment of growth he needed to have. Times were changing and Daniel Bergen needed to get his priorities straight before this went much further. He needed to understand what he believed and why and make a decision one way or the other. Would he take a stand, uphold the status quo in his clan, or simply fold to evil in the end? Those were the three choices.

Jeremy liked Daniel and counted him as a friend in the clans, but Daniel wasn’t as steady as he tried to let everyone believe. He wavered. He didn’t have the conviction needed to finish out the game and Jeremy was afraid that if Daniel didn’t get himself sorted out, the demons would use him to their advantage in some way. Daniel was a weak link and weak links could easily compromise strong players.

Only when the chirp indicating another voice mail came did he listen to that message and the others. Jeremy’s stomach seemed to sink fast inside of him. He dropped the phone into his pocket. Evangeline Duff is dead. Lawrence clan is going to be decommissioned by the heir.

Another clan gone.

Another one bites the dust. There was a pattern there, in the deaths of the clans. Soon, there’d be no one left on that end to do any fighting unless one counted the tiny splinter clans. Harrison House was opened.

Beth gasped and turned towards him. They succeeded?

The first evolution is most definitely over. It’s begun. The opening of the portal at Harrison House marked the real beginning of the game, an opening salvo by the enemy, and the end of the first evolution of the game. Lucifer’s fake earth was in the initial construction phase. The only consolation Jeremy had was that this phase had happened before in other locations and been stopped before. Many times. Over and over, lather, rinse, repeat. They could still stop it. They could still keep the games from moving into the Outer World and marking the end of humanity.

Oh, shit.

Evangeline was the sacrifice they used and she was the best sacrifice they could’ve ever found. She was already mostly tainted before she even got there. It probably wasn’t difficult to break her.

Evangeline Lawrence Duff had been a weak link, but of a different sort than Daniel. She’d been broken and corrupted mostly by her father, rigid in her beliefs and unbending. The evil had chosen well with her. She would’ve been a powerful choice for a sacrifice.

He stared at the road leading into the town and that stinking fog washing across it back and forth like a tide. Things skittered in that fog, tiny things that were just visible when the fog shifted slightly. The lesser demons coming out to play. A crab-like demon paused to stare at them, then went on its way. Daniel says to watch out for the second location. He doesn’t know when or where, just that it’s out here somewhere.

I think we already found it, she remarked dryly. Has to be. An infestation of this magnitude has to be one of the locations.

Jeremy agreed. That their search for answers had led them here was no coincidence. This was the second link in the chain and the demons were planning to make it a quick game, hoping to take everyone else by surprise. This town had all of the markers that were supposed to be present, with the bonus of the demon infestation. He wondered if they should call in Claudia to help, but since she wasn’t already here waiting for them, he concluded that she was needed elsewhere. They all tended to be pulled by an internal compass where they needed to go. It really has begun.

We knew it was coming. She stretched out her hand and grasped his.

He threaded their fingers together. Hers were cold and trembling a little. I’d hoped we’d have a bit more time before this evolution. He was sad for that and for the life he and Beth would never have. This was their life. Unlike the clans, they didn’t have the option of families and of leaving this game board for the Outer World. Trying to leave only took the fight out into the Outer World and no one wanted that. As long as they were marked, they were in, and would play this game until it, or they, were ended. They could never go back to who they’d been before making their choice to take up the knife and really, why would they want to? This, their calling, was far more important than their own lives.

This was the second evolution and they were the knife-bearers called to act in this place.

One or both of them weren’t going to make it out of this evolution.

Jeremy prayed that it’d be him because he didn’t think he could live without Beth. She’d made this life bearable and kept him going, his helpmate on their lonely road.

There’s never time, Jeremy. You and I…. We’ve never had time.

He’d met her at a house party back in the Sixties. She’d been at a private birthday weekend with her sorority sisters and the demon Jeremy had been following had crashed it. They’d teamed up and by the end of that weekend, the demon had been dead and Beth had chosen to join the ranks. They’d been together ever since.

But there had never been time. Not for the things they’d both really wanted. The calling came first. It was so much more important than their human desires and he could be glad that they’d had each other. Most were loners.

I know. Let’s do this. Leaning down, he pressed a kiss to her lips.

She wrapped him in a tight hug.

With a sigh, he drew back, released her, and they got into the car. Jeremy started it and pulled back onto the road, pressing his foot to the accelerator.

The car plunged into the fog and straight towards the town.

Harrison House:

The floor of the Harrison House entry hall was torn to pieces from where the demons had smashed through it when the first portal had opened.

The shadowlight, Logan, contemplated that hole in the tile. The edges of it were stained red with Evangeline Lawrence Duff’s blood. He could still feel the remnants of the evil in this house, permeating the bones of it. The sense of it disgusted him. So many people had died in this house over the history of it. It had been conceived with ill intent, tainted from those first architectural drawings.

Crouching, he studied the tile. There were so many different ways this game could go. He wished he had some certainty.

With a sigh, he stood and left the old, ruined mansion, turning outside to look up at the imposing structure. The faceless gargoyles all seemed to be staring back at him and he slipped backwards from that place, not wanting to turn his back to them. The stone creatures made him uneasy and he couldn’t figure out why. They were merely stone. They had no power and yet…. He knew Harrison House wasn’t fully out of play. It wasn’t anything more than a gut feeling telling him that. Harrison House was still important in some way to this game, but how?

Logan was troubled by several things in the past few days. That house. The fact that there’d been a sudden ceasing of demonic activity in one large region and an uptick of activity in another, as if the demons were trying to entice him and his players. And a loss of connection between himself and both Jeremy and Beth. He’d lost that internal connection to them, the one that told him where they were. It had happened the day Evangeline had been buried. Coincidence? He thought not. There were no coincidences. He should know where they were and be able to find them in seconds. He should be able to step into the shadows and go directly to them and he couldn’t.

They weren’t dead. He’d know if they were. This was just…a sudden stop of all information. It wasn’t that he’d lost his connection to all of his knife-bearers because he could still find Claudia and the others.

It was Claudia he went to now, slipping from shadow to shadow until he appeared in her motel room.

She was reading a paper and drinking coffee at the tiny table.

Claudia.

I still have three hours before I’m on the clock, she snapped.

Logan slid into the chair across from her. When was the last time you talked to Jeremy or Beth?

I don’t know. A couple weeks ago? Why? She folded the paper and laid it aside.

They’re missing.

She shrugged. So find them with your magical instant find compass.

It’s not working, he admitted.

You’re shitting me, she responded, then shook her head and drained her coffee cup.

Your lapse into coarse speech isn’t necessary. They’re missing. I know they’re alive, but I can’t see them anymore. I need you to find them for me.

The cup was tossed towards the trash can. Why me?

Because I trust you.

You trust the others. Why not pick one of them? I’m no tracker.

No, but you’re tenacious. I have every confidence that you’ll find them somehow. He watched her consider his request. She was going to accept because she always did when he asked her to help him. He’d responded by helping her in return, sometimes removing her from a situation that was too much for her to handle alone. He liked to think that they had something of a friendship going.

She crossed her arms. Okay. Let’s say I accept. What happens when I find them?

You let me know where they are and I fix whatever has gone wrong with my magic instant find compass.

Claudia’s dark eyes slid over him. You found me just fine. Can you find the others too? Is it just Jeremy and Beth you’re missing?

It is, he admitted.

She pursed her lips, then licked them and nodded. Okay. Sure. I’ll go on a hunt for my missing colleagues. How do I find you when I find them?

He gave her instructions, a few words that’d enable her to travel like he did. It’d look different to her because she was human and the way wasn’t for humans. While she’d be moving from shadow to shadow as he did, all she’d see was a corridor of light. This was important, however. He’d need whatever information she discovered. Got it?

Claudia nodded again. I’ve got it. I’ll do my best.

Any information, Claudia. Any at all.

I said I’ve got it.

Logan left her and began a tour of his players. It was time to check that the rest of his pieces were in place. He was feeling antsy, as if something had already gone very wrong.

CHAPTER TWO

Lawrence Clan, June 2015:

The windows were wide open, letting in a hot, humid breeze that made the curtains whip about. Outside, the sun was high in the sky, no clouds in sight, the heat seeming to shimmer in the air.

Renee Duff finished packing up one last box and did a fast visual sweep of the master bedroom. The dresser that contained her dad’s clothes was closed, the one that had held her mom’s hanging open, each drawer cracked to make sure nothing was left. The closet door was open, one full side of the large walk-in closet now empty of clothes, bare hangers crowding one end of the long rod. The jewelry box had already been emptied and taken away and even the boxes that had stored out-of-season clothes beneath the bed were now empty and gone. The room was starting to look bare to her.

While she couldn’t blame her dad for wanting to start moving on, she had to wonder if it was too soon after her mom’s death for this. Evangeline had only been dead for three weeks and buried for one. Was it right to be packing up every single personal item?

Renee had taken the few clothes she’d liked and what there was of the family jewelry, but the rest was going to the local battered woman’s shelter. Tom was insistent on that. A poetic action given that Angie had spent Renee’s life beating Renee’s father. He’d always sported some injury from her, whether bruises or broken bones or things in-between. It had been that way for as long as Renee could remember and she hated knowing that. She despised the sort of woman her mother had been. Her heart had ached for her dad’s pain.

Now, he was free. Evangeline was dead and he could move on with his life.

But this seemed awfully fast to her.

Tom was already making changes in here. The bedspread was one that had been stored and the extra pillows were gone. The quilt at the end was one that Jason’s grandmother had made and the curtains had been taken down, washed, and packed up. They were in one of the boxes being taken to Goodwill. Bare wooden blinds covered the windows. Idly, she wondered when he was going to start repainting the inside of the entire house. A change in paint color couldn’t come too soon in her opinion. Angie had chosen a butt-ugly yellow for the house that no one save she had liked.

Another load ready?

Her half-brother Jason’s voice came from the doorway and she nodded, sighing and sitting on the bed. He should be resting after that painful battle he’d had with that demon, yet here he was helping as best he could. Where’s dad? She looked over at him.

He smiled. Outside telling the guys how to load the truck. You know, like none of us have ever loaded boxes in a vehicle before.

Jason had convinced several of his friends to help and Renee was grateful, because the interaction was keeping their dad too busy to think. Whatever this oddly lighthearted mood of Tom’s meant, it was starting to freak her out. Tom was acting like Angie’s death fixed everything that had been wrong, when it didn’t. It only stopped the abuse, it didn’t magically erase the lingering effects of it. There’d always be some remnants of what Angie had done to him. Maybe some day he’d be able to push past it and live a fairly normal life, but she suspected he’d always jump at raised female voices and flinch when a woman moved too quickly towards him.

At least he’s keeping busy.

True. Jason nodded. Dad’s something of a slave driver when he wants to be.

Jason, do you think he’s okay? She rested an arm on top of one box.

Can’t be any worse than he’d be if she was still alive. With a shrug, he reached for the tape gun and taped up the box she’d finished filling.

I’m serious. You’ve been with him all day. Doesn’t this happy mood seem wrong?

Limping around the bed to her, he eased down beside her and stretched his hurt leg out, hand rubbing at the top of his knee. Honestly, it doesn’t. This here makes sense to me. With her clothes, shoes, and stuff gone, he can start focusing on letting go. Not to say he won’t have bad days. He will. This mood won’t last. He’ll probably be depressed for awhile, but this is a start on healing. I think it’s a good start.

Maybe I shouldn’t go. Grant clan is hours away. If he needs me —

He can always call me, Renee, and maybe you should trust dad and do what he arranged for you.

Renee looked away and tried to change the subject. She was conflicted about going to Grant clan to receive counseling from Hannah Grant. Part of her knew it was for the best. Even Daniel had recommended it. He and Tom had fully agreed that Renee should have counseling and that Hannah was best. But a part of her didn’t want to leave Tom when he’d pretty much be alone here. She didn’t recall him ever being alone in this house. There’d always been someone here. How are you feeling?

Jason hadn’t been around much in the week since the funeral. He was looking better than he had the first couple of days after the fight with the witch and the demon at Daniel’s, but he still looked horrible. The bruises were fading, yet still obvious, lightened to almost sickening shades of yellow and light purple. He also moved like his entire body still hurt, which it likely did. He’d taken quite a beating, one that should have done a lot more damage than it had, but given that he’d killed a Collector demon with a homemade knife and wasn’t a knife-bearer, she thought it might mean something. She hadn’t relayed that thought to anyone, however. Jason wouldn’t be receptive to the idea that he might be changed from what he’d been.

What could it possibly mean? She’d been trying to figure that out and come to no real conclusions. Not enough data to form a hypothesis, as their brother Sean would’ve said. Sean was gone now, too. He’d left for the Outer World and she hoped he was happy wherever he’d ended up.

Jason glanced at her, wry amusement in his eyes. Better than I did yesterday and you’re trying to change the subject.

I thought we were done with that one.

You did not.

Did so.

You’re going to Grant clan in the morning if I have to drive you myself and I know how much my baby sister loves to drive her own car. Me driving would leave you without transportation because I’m not driving your car and I’m not going to bum a ride back here from someone else.

Geez, okay. She rolled her eyes and raised a hand to wipe sweat from the back of her neck. Tom was reluctant to turn on the air conditioning, like he thought the heat would purge Angie’s presence from the house. The last few days had been miserable with the heat. Fine, I’ll go.

"Look, give Hannah Grant a chance. She’s one of dad’s friends, so she can’t be that bad. She’s helped dad get through some of the shit Eva threw at him."

True. Jessie doesn’t like her, though. Not in the past few months anyway. She’d been fine with Hannah and Geoff both until she’d been told she needed to bring in an alliance. She seemed to think they were out to get her and nothing Renee or Charlotte said changed her mind. Jessie was adamant on it.

Jessie’s not too keen on anything clan related, especially anyone who can tell her what to do. Hannah has that authority. That’s likely Jessie’s only objection to her.

Also true. Jessie was chafing pretty badly beneath clan restrictions and the way Grant clan was set up was rather like Lawrence clan had been set up before Angie’s death. Renee looked around the bedroom. It, like the back room downstairs, had always seemed like a depressing room to her. Maybe it was the weird yellow paint color or maybe the lighting, but this room and that one always made her feel bad. How had dad managed to spend every single night sleeping in here? Let’s get out of this room, she suggested, standing and moving towards the door. It’s making me depressed.

Jason followed her out into the hall and across to her own room, leaning against the door frame while she rearranged things in her suitcase. You talked to Charlotte lately?

No time. I’ve had too many clan duties to fulfill since mom died. When mom said I had no idea all she had to do, she was right. I’ll be glad to finally hand it all over to dad tomorrow so he can dismantle it completely. There was a certain process she’d had to go through to get to the point of transferring power to Tom. She’d had to fulfill all immediate duties and clear off the roster before any transference could be completed. There’d been papers to sign and people to meet with, and Renee would’ve been lost without Tom’s guidance through it. No one could say Tom didn’t know how to run a clan. He was far more qualified than Renee, that was sure.

I thought maybe she’d texted you.

Something in his voice made her look up, a little hint of verbal smugness in those words. She studied him. The smugness extended outward to his expression. About what?

Oh, he glanced down and back up, rubbing the toe of one boot against the floorboards. We’re moving in together.

No way! Finally, some honestly happy news. She’d been cheer-leading for the two of them for a long time now.

Yes, way. That’s where I’ve been the past week. She found us some places to look at about thirty to forty minutes out from her clan. You know, just far enough that we can feel like we’re on our own. Cal and Lena can’t just pop in and you know they would if we were any closer. Lena’s such a mother hen she’d want to make sure everything was perfect all the time. Charlotte was adamant on the exact time we had to be from the clan. Apparently, Lena won’t travel. At all. Has an aversion to going anywhere further than thirty minutes from home. They don’t even go on vacations. It’s kind of bizarre. Her coming to Eva’s funeral was a fluke. I think she only did it because she and Cal are friends with dad and that was more important than her weird quirk.

I think she was an Army brat as a kid. She once mentioned that she’d had to travel a lot in younger days. Said she’d felt like a gypsy wanderer and vowed that once she could, she’d never do it again.

Makes sense, I guess. Anyway, we’ve narrowed it down to two places and plan on making a decision this weekend.

"Good. You should start settling down."

You make it sound like I’m ancient bachelor on the verge of retirement.

She snorted. Hardly. But you can’t keep on like you were before. Camping and sleeping in your car all the time? Yuck.

Hey, I stayed at friend’s houses and motels too.

It’s time for you to embrace adulthood, bro. You’re thirty. It’s time to adult. Get an apartment with your girlfriend and start figuring out how to be a scout when…. She trailed off and shrugged.

When everything we all knew was a lie. Yeah. That’s the plan. Try to figure out how I can get myself ready for the next evolution. Whenever that might be. Which leads right back to you, he pointed a finger at her, "getting your head in the right place. Dad